Question About Multi Media Card

[Shantanu]

In a magazine article about miniature storage technologies, they said that Smart Media cards are cheap because they contain no file system. If 16MB Smart Media cards are the biggest ones around when you buy a Smart Media device, that device will never be able to utilize a card larger than 16MB.

So I decided to buy an MP3 player that supports Multi Media Card instead. I picked up a RCA Kazoo 64MB yesterday. It works quite well. However, the instruction manual says that the memory can be "expanded up to 128MB". This suggests the device can't take cards larger than 64MB. I was under the impression that MMC devices could take cards as big as companies can make them, because the cards come formatted to work that way. Is it not so?

 

[Shantanu]

.

 

[eplebnista]

According to this review, the kazoo can take a 128MB card to work along with the internal 64MB for a maximum capacity of 192MB of storage.

hth,
eplebnista

 

[yllus]

<< In a magazine article about miniature storage technologies, they said that Smart Media cards are cheap because they contain no file system. If 16MB Smart Media cards are the biggest ones around when you buy a Smart Media device, that device will never be able to utilize a card larger than 16MB. >>

Incorrect. The basic difference between CompactFlash and SmartMedia comes is that CF come with an embedded 'control chip' which identifies the card to your device. SM is slimmer by reason of having no such control chip on it, AFAIK. This doesn't necessarily mean that a device originally meant to take, say, a 64MB SM card at the largest is always going to be limited to that max size - the device will just need to be flashed with updated instructions to be able to handle larger cards.

Example: My Creative Nomad II MP3 player came out with 64MB SmartMedia support at the greatest. Couple months later, Creative release a flash update for the Nomad II line to support 128MB cards as well.

Unfortunately I don't know details about MMC so I couldn't tell you if the format is self-determining like CF or device-reliant like SM. Anyone got a good website with details?